Isaacman: Chinese Taikonauts Likely to Fly Around Moon in 2027

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman asserted today that next year Chinese taikonauts “likely” will fly around the Moon and the United States no longer will hold the distinction as the only country to accomplish that feat.

In a speech at the AIAA ASCEND conference in Washington, D.C., this morning, Isaacman continued to characterize the United States and China as being in a modern-day space race akin to the 1960s competition with the Soviet Union, and, like the 1960s, America must win.

The United States is the only country that has ever sent people to circle around, orbit, or land on the Moon. From 1968-1972, we sent two test flights to lunar orbit (Apollo 8 and 10), six missions that landed (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17), and one was supposed to land (Apollo 13), but an explosion in the Service Module enroute to the Moon meant it had to swing around the Moon instead in order to get home. Last month’s Artemis II mission flew a similar “free return” trajectory and went just a bit further, setting a new record for the furthest distance from Earth flown by a crew and exciting new generations about human lunar exploration.

Isaacman’s message today was that the next crew to make lunar headlines likely will be Chinese, and it could be soon.

Just a few weeks ago, the year of America’s 250th anniversary, the Artemis II crew traveled farther into space than any humans in history. The world paused from the discourse to witness those four amazing astronauts journey around the moon and return home safely. This was the opening act in America’s return to the lunar surface. We are already well on our way to what comes next.

And we must, because the next time the world tunes in to watch astronauts fly around the moon, which will be likely sometime in 2027, they will be taikonauts, and America will no longer be the exclusive power to send humans into the lunar environment.  — Jared Isaacman

In 2021, China outlined a plan for an International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) in partnership with Russia that didn’t envision humans on the surface until the mid-2030s. Two years later, however, the deputy director of the China Manned Space Agency said China would land taikonauts on the Moon by 2030, a goal that’s been repeated since. Details on whatever preparatory flights may be planned haven’t been revealed, but a step-by-step approach similar to Apollo wouldn’t be surprising.

After the fatal Apollo 1 fire during a pre-launch test in January 1967 that killed astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee, NASA launched four crewed Apollo test flights before committing to the first lunar landing on Apollo 11. Apollo 7 was an earth-orbital test flight of the Saturn V rocket with the redesigned Apollo Command Module (CM) in October 1968. Apollo 8 orbited the Moon three months later, sending back the iconic “Earthrise” photo. Apollo 9 in March 1969 was another earth-orbital flight to test rendezvous and docking procedures between the CM and the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) that would take two of the three astronauts down to and back from the surface. Apollo 10 was a similar test flight in May 1969, but in lunar orbit where the two-person LEM crew detached from the CM and descended close to the surface, but didn’t land, ascending back to redock with the CM.

China hasn’t shared how many steps it plans before their first crewed lunar landing. Isaacman’s comment today referred only to astronauts flying “around the Moon.”  China’s human spaceflight program so far epitomizes a step-by-step approach. They had four uncrewed flights before their first taikonaut flew in 2003. It was two years before a second crewed flight, and then another three years for the next. Their space station program similarly evolved over many years. Two small space stations with brief periods of occupancy were launched in 2011 and 2016. Assembly of their current three-module space station began in 2021 with permanent occupancy starting in November 2022. (The U.S.-Russian-European-Japanese-Canadian International Space Station has been continuously occupied for more than 25 years.) Whether that signals how they’ll approach crewed lunar flights remains to be seen. So far they’ve launched several robotic spacecraft to the Moon and the next, Chang’e-7, is expected this year.

As for NASA’s Artemis program, on February 27, Isaacman reconfigured the next mission, Artemis III, to be an Apollo 9-like mission in Earth orbit instead of the first lunar landing since Apollo 17. Now it will test rendezvous and docking procedures between the Orion spacecraft and one or both of the Human Landing Systems (HLSs) being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin. For Apollo, the LEM and CM launched together, but this time the landers will lift off and make their way to the Moon separately, meeting Orion in lunar orbit.

He is intent on increasing the cadence of launches of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that puts Orion into orbit  — it was more than three years between the first and second in November 2022 and April 2026 — and plans Artemis III sometime in 2027. The date is dependent on when the landers are ready, but he said today they’ll try for a “partial” Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) by the end of this year. Exactly what that means is unclear. WDRs usually happen pretty close to launch when the rocket is filled with propellant and a practice countdown takes place, but it is extremely unlikely that the “pathfinder” versions of SpaceX’s Starship HLS or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 will be ready for at least another year.